


The Sound of Bridge Traffic

by busaikko



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Body Horror, Children, Decapitation, Episode: e030 Dana, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 16:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos tries to understand Night Vale through its children.  The creepy, silent, tattooed messenger children...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Bridge Traffic

**Author's Note:**

> _Today’s proverb: The human soul weighs twenty-one grams, smells like grilled vegetables, looks like a wrinkled tartan quilt, and sounds like bridge traffic._
> 
>  
> 
> Spoilers through Dana (the Michael Sandero storyline). Many thanks to my beta Cesare, and to A.N. for Spanish translation.

Night Vale, Carlos thinks, wastes the potential of its citizens in a way that would be criminal anywhere else. He says this to the Faceless Old Woman, who's taken to visiting while he has dinner in his lab, and she laughs.

"Oh, no, that's perfectly legal here," she tells him, sounding a bit distracted as she installs a new distro of Linux on his laptop. He hopes it works better than the one she'd previously set up. He'd expected the name _Crypt OS_ to be figurative, not literal.

"I think it has something to do with time." He takes his burrito out of the microwave and pokes it. It twitches, but doesn't have the energy to scurry off his dish anymore, so he douses it with salsa and settles down on the sofa to eat. "Some of the tissue cultures from clocks are pretty clever," he adds. "I'm training them to run mazes. Or... ooze through mazes, to be precise. It's amazing what temporal organisms will do for food pellets."

The Faceless Old Woman says, "Hm," but Carlos has the strong impression that she's raising her non-existent eyebrows at his dinner.

"You could have gone into IT," he says, returning to what he'd meant to say. Somehow, all his conversations circle uncannily back to time and clocks, like a tongue probing the hole where a tooth had been. "You've got a very scientific mind."

"The world needs old women, too," she tells him sharply, but Carlos imagines that she's curious. How could she not be?

"You weren't born old," Carlos points out. He has no idea how old she really is. He knows she wears lime-green trousers with an elastic waist, but she also has bandoliers that cross her chest in an X, filled with USB drives instead of ammunition.

She laughs at him again. Carlos thinks, annoyed, that Cecil's his best friend here because he's the only person who doesn't think Carlos' ignorance is hilarious.

"Of course I was," she says, and she sounds like she's smiling with anger. "This is Night Vale."

The next day she shows up early, when he's taking his afternoon break with a bottle of Coke and a pack of Twizzlers. She drops off two blank-eyed messenger children and then dashes out, saying she has to get to the bank before closing.

The children stand in the doorway, arms hanging straight down. They're not so much dirty as faded, and one has the word _NO_ tattooed on their forehead. They are both wearing oversized t-shirts and shorts and are barefoot.

Carlos invites them in. He grabs a couple of beakers from the autoclave and serves them soda, and pushes the bag of candy in their direction.

They sit when he tells them to, and drink when he says they can, even though he doesn't see them picking up their glasses.

He can't tell what sex they are, but more importantly he has no idea if they have _minds_ – or to be unscientifically precise, _souls_. His eyes keep getting pulled back to the tattoo, and it makes him think about the stories his grandfather told when he was drunk, about grinding poverty and the terrors of war.

Carlos is pretty sure he's angry, deep down in the place where he pretends he isn't also terrified, but there's nothing useful he can do with either emotion. So he teaches a short impromptu lesson on the properties of iodine, and the kids seem marginally interested as he heats it until it turns into violet gas. He gets them to duplicate the experiment, and tries to explain about the periodic table of the elements, and then backs way up and tries to explain what numbers are.

The kids don't say anything, but he senses a vague, unsettling boredom emanating from them, so he grabs the Coke bottle and shows them how to filter the color out of the drink.

The kid without the tattoo almost looks disappointed when Carlos says that it's probably better not to drink the colorless liquid. He tells them there's more Coke in the refrigerator, and in the space of time while his back's turned as he cleans up, somehow the kids help themselves to a bottle each.

He wouldn't know what time it was even if he had a clock, but outside the windows he sees the dark suns have set and tendrils of impenetrable void are spreading out from the east. He worries that the kids' parents will want them home, if they have parents. He worries that secret police officers will knock politely on his door and demand that he hand the children over, and that he will say yes, or that he will say no.

He heats up a tin of Spaghetti-Os, dishes it out, and goes outside to call Cecil while the kids are possibly absorbing some kind of sustenance from the pasta cephalopods.

"This is Carlos, calling for personal reasons that aren't _that kind_ of personal," he tells Intern Ravi, who puts him on hold.

Exactly twenty seconds later, the Muzak cuts off and Cecil makes it known that he is delighted – _overjoyed_ – to be contacted for any reasons, personal or _not_ personal.

"I have a couple of messenger children," he tells Cecil. "Here in my lab. Do they have any allergies? Or parents?"

"Um," Cecil says, and sounds flustered. "Are you dissecting them?"

"No!" Carlos snaps, overly-loud, and then feels his face warm with embarrassment. "I was... teaching them science. They seemed curious," he adds defensively. "But mostly passive, mute, and traumatized."

"They're probably not there any more," Cecil says, and he's using his radio voice, as if he's trying to force reassurance through the airwaves. "But I know a good exterminator if you need one, with very reasonable rates."

Carlos cracks the door open and peers inside. The room's empty, as are the bowls and bottles on the table. "You're right, they're gone." He checks the bathroom and the storage room, just in case. "Sorry to have bothered you at work."

"Oh, no bother _at all_ ," Cecil says with alarmingly earnest concern. "Do you want me to drop by later?"

Carlos hesitates. Part of him thinks that if he only asked Cecil the right questions, Night Vale would unfold before him and lay bare its secrets. Another – boring and old – part of him recalls that Cecil's program lasts well into the night.

"I'll be fine," he says, trying to sound like he's not lying, and ends the call with an abrupt _goodbye_.

He turns the radio on out of a masochistic urge to hear what Cecil tells the town about him, but there's a relentless flood of normalcy. The post-rush-hour traffic report from the eye in the sky, and the community calendar, and reminders from the PTA about bicycle gun safety, and an election editorial that makes it sound like the most momentous show-down democracy has ever put on display.

Cecil comes on strong but at heart he's good, which Carlos forgets sometimes. He's still awake and puttering around the lab when Big Rico's locks its solid steel gates and the staff hunker down in the turrets to wait for dawn. A bit after that, he hears a car pull off the road, and then someone shouting _Don't shoot! Don't shoot!_ , and a moment later he hears Big Don Donovan across the way holler back to keep it down, folks were trying to get some sleep. Which sets off all the dogs up and down the road.

Carlos waits a bit, but when he doesn't hear the car drive off, he peers through the blinds and sees Cecil pacing, bare arms crossed against the cold, probably consumed by conflict about whether to knock or not.

Carlos can't pretend he doesn't know, now, so he sighs and pulls on his lab coat and goes out front, where Cecil freezes, looking guilty and ashamed.

"Are you going to tell me anything useful?" Carlos asks, taking Cecil by the elbow and steering him inside, out of the line of fire.

Cecil's drawn to the row of Coke bottles, rinsed and drying on the table next to the sink. He touches one gingerly with an extended finger, and then yanks it back like he was burned.

"Probably not," Cecil says, and there's tension in his shoulders.

Carlos sighs. "Did you have dinner?" One of Cecil's eyebrows climbs up, and then the other follows. "I don't cook," Carlos clarifies. "But I can microwave you something. Burrito? Lasagne?"

"Whatever _you're_ having," Cecil says, sounding thrilled. He carries lab stools outside while Carlos makes fried rice from a box, and they eat under the maw of the void, watching the moon rise.

"They _are_ children, right?" Carlos asks. "They're human. I think. I didn't touch them," he says, because he doesn't want Cecil to think – "I don't arbitrarily run tests on children. That would be unethical."

"Of course," Cecil says, sounding a little shocked. Carlos gets up to go back inside. He's exhausted, all of a sudden. "Carlos," and the familiar voice is frayed thin with concern and possibly fear, "they need vegetables. Children. That's what I've heard."

"To grow up strong and healthy?" Carlos tosses out before he can self-censor.

Cecil flinches. "No," he says, and he's looking up at the moon, caught in a caul of dark clouds. "They don't grow up. They never do. They don't... a lot of things."

Carlos nods. "When the sand storm passed through town – do you remember that?"

Cecil floats a hand through the air, and Carlos gets the strong impression that Cecil doesn't want to remember. Carlos is sympathetic; he'd forget if he could, but instead he has memories so unreal they feel like dreams, slipping away when he tries to focus on them, but leaving him jumpy and nauseous.

"There was another me with me in the lab," Carlos says. He's trying to phrase events dispassionately, as if he were writing a report. That's the only way he'll ever be able to get the words out. "We tried working together at first – I thought maybe two heads might be better than one. He was very clever." Carlos pauses. _Clever_ is a weasel-word. What his double had been was an exact mirror image of himself, identical in form and history and personality, at least as far as they'd been able to ascertain in the beginning, when they'd been on speaking terms. Exactly the same, yet Carlos had known instinctively that he'd been evil down to his toenails. "He came at me with a scalpel. I grabbed one of the chairs –" Carlos' hands clench unconsciously at the memory, palms aching with healed bruises "– and battered him until he was dead, and then kept hitting him until he stopped moving."

Cecil hops off his chair so fast he stumbles and his spoon goes flying.

"It's a different chair," Carlos reassures him. "The one held together with duct tape." He is amazed that he can say that. That it hasn't occurred to him until now that he should have thrown that chair away, burned it, done _anything_ but repair it. "The question I have is, which one of us died? I feel," he says quickly, trying not to alarm Cecil, "like the same person who came here a year ago to study this town. Only... there are times when I'm not afraid anymore, and that makes me wonder. Maybe the Carlos who was sensibly terrified is the one buried in a shallow grave under the Big Rico's dumpster, and I'm – " he gropes for a way to express the wrongness "– just a newly-born thing made out of desert sand."

"Maybe there's nothing to be afraid of," Cecil says, and he gives Carlos a swift tight hug before saying a disconcerted good night and leaving him alone.

The next day, at the same time by Carlos' stomach clock, five children show up. He has a plate of carrot sticks and celery sticks and a gallon jug of milk set out.

They all stare at him accusingly with their flat dead eyes until he throws his hands up and goes to get the package of cookies that he'd bought from heavily-armed Girl Scouts. When he comes back, the lab table has sprouted half-empty Coke bottles.

Carlos thinks about warning them about tooth decay, but he's not sure they all have teeth. Some of them seem to have pointed tongues, and others look like their mouths are full of churning darkness.

He does ask them if they need any help with their homework, and gets uncomprehending stares – and a blanker than usual blankness from the faceless one – as an answer. They are varying heights and therefore an assortment of ages, he thinks. The youngest looks around six and the oldest around eleven, though they're all probably small. Malnourished, perhaps. The cookies disappear fast, and even though Carlos eats a carrot stick right in front of them, to demonstrate how delicious they are, there's no fooling the kids.

He gives them a tour of the lab, demonstrating the microscope and the fume cupboard, explaining basic lab safety. They huddle around the eye-wash and Carlos lets them each take a turn at pushing the lever, even the ones without eyes. They seem to enjoy watching the water fountain up. Carlos supposes they may never have seen naturally free-flowing water, if they've lived all their lives here in Night Vale.

He takes them out back and shows them how to make baking soda rockets, and leaves them to that mayhem while he goes to buy a couple of take-out wheat-free pizzas from Big Rico's.

The Faceless Old Woman appears while they're eating, complaining about long lines and having to fill out forms in triplicate. Carlos tells her to help herself to pizza. The children don't seem to notice her, although Carlos gets the impression that she's walking across the glass and stainless-steel doors of the lab's many storage cupboards and tissue culture racks. Carlos makes sure to keep all reflective surfaces polished brightly for her; he thinks of himself as a good host, and that means having some idea of where a guest is, or whether they're actually there or not.

Carlos isn't sure if the kids will just drift away again after dinner, but he gives them his worn deck of playing cards and puts the radio on for them, and goes to have a chat with the Faceless Old Woman in the bathroom.

He doesn't want to be insensitive, but he feels that getting things out in the open is better than pretending ignorance.

He sits down on the toilet seat lid and watches the reflection of the mirror in the polished shower pipe.

"They are real children," he says, when she wanders into view. "They're also... something else. I don't believe in ghosts," he adds. "But Cecil's got me half-convinced that there's something to the government conspiracy theories. They're orphans – they don't have families?"

The Faceless Old Woman shrugs carelessly. "Night Vale is an in-between place," she says, and Carlos has the impression that she'd give him a sympathetic look if she could. "The children come and go. It's safer for them to be in municipal care, but they get bored sitting around the dormitory all day. They like having some occupation. It keeps them from forming unruly murderous mobs."

Carlos crosses his arms and bites his tongue to keep from asking about _well-ordered_ murderous mobs. "There are compulsory education laws. I looked them up."

Somehow, the look Carlos doesn't get still manages to be scoffing. "They don't want to go. Despite what you think, it's impossible to make them do anything they don't want to do."

Carlos thinks about the carrot sticks. "The tattoos..."

"Kids like that kind of thing."

And now Carlos feels ridiculous, the way he often does when he discovers that he's slipped back into applying his cultural values and beliefs where they don't fit. He never wanted to study anthropology, and he thinks it's unfair of life to have thrown him some of the most fascinating puzzles of his career wrapped up in social complexity. "Okay," he says, changing the subject. "Should I do anything special for the children with no faces or eyes or mouths?"

The Faceless Old Woman laughs, and Carlos has to work to keep from getting angry.

"You're fine," she says, and then adds, sounding irritated, "faces get lost, all the time. It happens. Eyes and limbs. Lives. Hearts and other internal organs. Names. Entire scientists go missing and after a year people stop looking. First the sense of fear goes, and then the sense of pain, and after that – you just are who you are." She shrugs, and then pats her pockets down. "I've got what's left of my true face around here somewhere. If faces are important to you."

"No," Carlos says quickly; the idea fills him with foreboding. "Thank you. I just don't want anyone to feel left out."

"Just keep feeding them," she reassures him, and wanders away.

The children – not always the same children – visit every day for two months. Carlos spends a ludicrous amount of money on junk food, and Cecil is in a continual froth of worry about how maybe Carlos' biological clock is ticking.

"I just," Cecil says one afternoon, dropping in before work to deliver a bouquet of ham, which the children devour raw before Carlos can even find something to use as a vase. "I didn't know you wanted children."

Carlos means to shrug, but finds himself throwing his arms out like he's at the end of his rope. Cecil looks as startled as he feels.

"I _don't_ ," he says, and it comes out more like a growl. "But they're like the clocks, there's something wrong with them, and no one cares." The second the words are out of his mouth he knows he's not only wrong but also being melodramatic, and he crosses his arms in embarrassment.

"Carlos," Cecil says, and there's a theatrical twist of anguish in his voice. "There's nothing that can be done."

Carlos shrugs. "I refuse to accept that."

Like the sun coming out after a storm, Cecil grins. It's terrifying, equal parts ferocious and adoring. "Well, of course. That's why you're _here_."

The children stop coming one day in June. Carlos is surprised, but stranger things happen every day. Perhaps the helicopters have carried them off for another re-education week, or there's a town council meeting they need to disrupt. He puts the radio on and suffers through Lola Chang's scrapbooking and necromancy hour, waiting for Cecil and the news. Cecil doesn't say anything about children.

Carlos eyes the package of cheap triple-fudge cookies in the center of the lab table. His trousers have been tighter in the waist since he started supplementing his diet with child-approved snacks. He turns his back on temptation and calls the Faceless Old Woman.

She answers on the third ring, sounding sharp and annoyed. Carlos supposes he's interrupting, and tries not to waste her time. She sighs at him anyway, and in the background he can hear heavy dull metallic clanging, like a hammer striking a pipe, again and again.

"Children get bored," she tells him. "They go places. Don't you have a grant proposal deadline on Friday?"

"Yes," Carlos says, and hangs up. He goes to Big Rico's and has a garden salad for dinner, and stays up until well into the second hour of Insect Mastication Noises of the Amazon, forcing his thoughts into tidy and comprehensible order. He has a _Do not disturb_ sign taped to the door. It works too well; the solitude grates on him and makes him jump at shadows.

He settles back into his research with artificial fervor and doesn't talk about the children. He sees them sometimes running errands in town, though he can't be sure if they're the same kids. He's a little concerned for them after the election night massacre, but he does find himself alarmingly assured by the knowledge that the only people who die _earned_ their deaths legally.

One day Cecil invites him out for some investigative journalism. While hunkered down in the flatbed of Cecil's truck and keeping an eye out for a velociraptor, Cecil asks Carlos what he was like in high school.

Carlos shrugs and shifts, trying to stay in the shade of the tarp over them. He's sopping with sweat and torn between admitting he's too old for this kind of thing and a bone-deep giddy excitement.

"Average," he says. "I didn't play sports, I got good grades, and I worked at my uncle's shop after school. I had a crew cut just like my dad's until I graduated," he adds, just to see Cecil wince. "How about you?"

Cecil raises the binoculars and raises up carefully on his hip to peer out. He doesn't look at Carlos, but he says, desert dry, "Two words: Jheri curl."

Carlos can't help grinning, because he has the most amazing mental image. "I want to see your yearbook," he says. "Do they have it at the library?"

Cecil twists about in alarm. "You are _not_ going to the – " he starts, fully outraged before he realizes Carlos is messing with him. Carlos grins, unrepentant, and Cecil turns away with a huff of irritation. But after a minute of scanning the horizon and scratching notes along his arm with what looks like a thorn, Cecil says, "I'd let you see it, if you did something for me."

Carlos says sure, and Cecil gives him a brilliant smile. After a moment, Carlos realizes that the relative brightness of Cecil's teeth is because something has blocked the sunlight, and a moment later the tarp is ripped away by razor-sharp talons.

They barely escape with their lives; in retrospect, it's enormous fun.

The next day, Cecil drops by with his arms wrapped around a large wooden box. He gives Carlos a wide-eyed pleading look, and Carlos waves him in.

Cecil sets the box down on the lab table carefully. "Carlos," he says, nearly vibrating with nervous energy, "this is Michael Sandero's original head. Michael, this is Carlos."

" _Hola, profesor_ ," says a muffled voice. Cecil smacks himself in the forehead dramatically, and pulls the top off the box. The base has a sort of green velvet cushion, and there's a severed head on it. _Amputated_ , Carlos reminds himself, and is both scientifically curious and deeply unsettled. Heads need bodies; that's a proven fact, but Michael gives him a shy smile and waggles an eyebrow.

Carlos smiles back. What else can he do? " _"Hola. ¿Cómo estás?_ "

Michael says he's fine, which Carlos has trouble believing – he heard the story over the news, of how Michael's mother liked the new head better and got rid of her original son. He hopes Michael's in whatever passes for therapy in Night Vale.

"Michael's taking the SATs in October," Cecil says, sitting down on a lab chair after checking quickly to make sure it's not the duct-taped one. "I can do the paperwork – I have connections, you know – but..." He drops his eyes to the table and traces circles there with his fingers. "I was never a good student. I always forgot what it was I wasn't supposed to know any more and had to stay after school in the detention pit. But I thought, being a scientist, and _knowing things_ , you might be able to help? Studying?"

"I can't pay a lot," Michael says. He looks embarrassed. "I've got a job at the Circle K, but I'm saving for an apartment."

"He was sleeping in his car," Cecil says grimly. "And living on Polar Pops."

Carlos does _not_ make any digs about Cecil's paternal clock going off – he's a better person than that – but he can't help feeling a little vindicated. "I'll need textbooks," he says, and wishes he had a pen so he could make a list. "And I'll call the school to find out the curriculum. If you promise to work hard," he says, lowering his chin to give Michael his best stern look before ruining it with a wink, "the lessons are free." Michael's mouth tightens stubbornly. Carlos waves a hand. "My cousin Óscar taught me calculus years ago; someday you'll be the teacher. Now it's my turn."

Michael nods once, careful not to overbalance. "Okay," he says, taking a bracing breath. Carlos has no idea how he's breathing, or talking for that matter. But he supposes it's no stranger than the president of the local community college being a fist-sized river rock with a great deal of skepticism about Earth Science.

Cecil jumps to his feet, wiping his palms down the sides of his trousers before shoving them deep into his pockets. "Great," he says, with manic enthusiasm. "I'll go next door and get some dinner." He's across the room and out the door before Carlos can even remind him about anchovies.

The hasty departure is odd even for Cecil, but then Michael says, "Hey, what's that?" and Carlos notices the bound volume on the table, with _Night Vale High School_ across the front in gold.

Carlos and Michael are still turning pages and mopping up tears of laughter with tissues when Cecil returns.

"I despise you both," he declares, setting the grilled vegetable and calamari wheat-free pizza down and crossing to the sink to grab dishes. "Really. How juvenile."

"Mayor Winchell," Michael blurts out. Carlos supplies the visual, haloing his hands around his head in an approximation of the height of her hair. Cecil manages to hold his judgmental expression for a moment longer, but then his face cracks with a grin.

"Steve Carlsberg." He paused in dishing out the slices, watching as Carlos obediently flipped back through the alphabet to the Cs. "He was an asshole back then, too." He slides the plates across the table, and as they eat launches into a story about a class prank involving earthworms and power tools, and how Steve Carlsberg ruined everything. Half the class of 1984 graduated a semester late because it took them that long to crawl their way out of the cells in the abandoned mine shaft and stagger home under cover of darkness. "Thanks to Steve," Cecil says, with deep loathing, as if he's speaking about a roach on the floor.

"Sucks," Michael says, with a sympathetic nod.

And it strikes Carlos that Cecil and Michael, the Faceless Old Woman and the children, are in the process of surviving the loss of fear and the loss of pain. He wonders what it must be like on the other side, to be whittled down to essential being and then to go on as if nothing's changed. Like the clocks, Carlos thinks: hands still turning, diligently trying to replicate time even once it's become immeasurable. He wonders whether losing everything is freeing and enlightening, like the New Age people say, or whether there's the constant danger of being pulled back, of having to shoulder the burden of loss all over again.

He supposes there's comfort in knowing that until the government approves a notarized application to die, even the most horrific fates have to be survived.

"More pizza?" Cecil asks, hovering, a line of concern between his eyes, as if he's afraid Carlos' wool-gathering means he's somehow misstepped.

Carlos is an organic, temporal organism. He yearns to understand and to belong, to make a place for himself, a family; he's not ready to lose any more of himself to Night Vale right now. So he smiles and holds his plate out obediently, and is rewarded.


End file.
